There are two fundamental issues licenses address:

- what kind of restrictions does the copyright holder place upon use of the software?
- what kind of restrictions does the copyright holder place upon the redistribution of the software?

In my case, though it would be a little satisfying to say that a company like Amazon.com or members of the RIAA can't use my software, I think it's more moral not to place those kinds of restrictions on my software. The open source definition doesn't allow it, either.

The real question is, "What kind of license should derived works have?" The BSD license (sans advertising clause) says that you don't mind anyone changing your license and redistributing your software. The GPL says that people who produce derivative works or redistribute them have to respect your original license.

Most other stuff falls somewhere in between.

I don't care to have other people changing the distribution rights of works derived from my work, so I don't mind the GPL at all. I do like credit being given where it's due, so the Artistic license is kinda nice too, where it says that changes made to the core program must be made clear. So I don't get blamed for really awful code.

The big philosophical difference between the BSD license and the GPL is that the former seeks to increase software freedom by providing good software with no restrictions on its use. The latter attempts to increase freedom by providing good software that can never be made less free (everyone has the same rights to it, and its derivatives).

In reply to Re: How to license a program written in Perl? by chromatic
in thread How to license a program written in Perl? by ZZamboni

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